Today, February 1st, is the 120th anniversary of
the establishment of the United States Forest Service under the Department of
Agriculture, by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. I am posting this short
message today, not just because of the Forest Service anniversary, but because this
year, possibly more than any year since, our national forests, grasslands, and
even our national parks are under attack. They are under attack from the same
forces that Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot sought to protect our public
lands from in 1905.
I am a life-long conservative, by every definition of the
word. I am not a Republican nor a Democrat, but I will always vote for the
person, regardless of affiliation, who most closely supports the things that I
believe in. Do not even dare to accuse me of being anything but conservative. I
was supporting Ronald Reagan when most of today’s legislators were still in
diapers back in 1968. But I am also a conservationist and have been so even
longer, when I decided my goal in life was to become the career that I lived
and loved for twenty-six years as a Ranger. And I also believe that our
government at both the state and federal level has become too big, too
unwieldy, and too intrusive in our daily lives. It has also become too
expensive for its own system to support. That much I can agree on with those
who were attacking our public lands, however there is a group in Congress that
is using the new administration’s push to reduce government spending as
justification to gut our land management partners, specifically the US Forest
Service and the Bureau of Land Management. During the first Trump
administration, the same representatives from Utah and other Western states
attempted to eliminate the division of law enforcement and investigations
within the Forest Service, and even in the past month the Supreme Court of the
United States ruled against another Utah-based lawsuit that tried to force the
BLM to transfer the lands it manages in the beehive state to state control.
These attacks have continued, and they always seem to originate with the Utah
and Nevada delegations.
Our public lands in the United States are a unique and incredibly
special heritage. No other country in the world has lands that are owned by us,
the public, and allows access to those lands like our country does. Our
national forests and grasslands comprise of 193 million acres that contribute
over thirteen billion dollars to the national economy every year from forest
visitors alone. Over 20 percent of our nation’s clean water supply comes from
the more than 400,000 lakes and 60,000 miles of rivers and streams on national
forest land. Most of those nearly 200 million acres are open to hunting,
fishing, hiking, camping, bicycling, ATV riding, horseback riding, and myriads
of other recreational opportunities. The Forest Service provides, excuse me,
provided 7400 seasonal jobs that contributed to the local economy until last
year when Congress drastically cut funding for seasonal employment. This
argument of trimming the budget is a thinly veiled disguise. Their real intent
is to eliminate both our public lands, and the agencies that manage so that
they can be supposedly managed better by the respective, and most frequently western,
states. Of course, those states do not have the budget, the manpower, or in
many cases the training or desire to do so, and failing that, they would be
forced to sell to the highest bidder. That is who these champions of budget
reduction actually represent, those “highest bidders.”
Representative Emmer, for twenty-six years I worked as a
park ranger in your district. Representative Stauber, I live in your district
and have voted for you every time you’ve run for Congress, but if you choose to
take sides with those who would steal our public lands and our unique American
Heritage of wild and public places from us, I will add my voice to those who
oppose you. In 1984 I stood toe to toe with Governor Mario Cuomo when he tried
to cut New York State’s Forest Ranger force, which I believe is one of the
finest forest protection agencies in the world, in half because his downstate
advisors told him they weren’t needed anymore. We won that battle, and, now as
then, we’ll win this one.
I leave you with my favorite quote from one of my
conservation heroes, the first chief of the United States Forest Service,
Gifford Pinchot; “Where
conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered
from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long
run.”
We are the greatest number. Contact your members of Congress, contact your senators. As
the song says, “This land is your land, this land is my land, this land was
made for you and me.” Without your help, this land won’t be yours or mine or
our grandchildren’s in the long run, if we don’t act now.
To paraphrase Smokey Bear, “Only you can protect our forests!”
